To the Journal editor:

The state of the union’s political wildfire. Having been an emergency management team member for 12 years, I witnessed the critical role emergency response teams and elected officials play when disasters strike.

Emergency management’s mission is to prepare, respond, and recover from disasters, then submit an after-action report recommending improvements.

Let’s focus on one news headline, loss of water pressure to hydrants during the 2025 L.A. wildfires. L.A. emergency management’s AAR is pending but past wildfire AARs have documented hydrant loss of water pressure.

Canada’s 2016 Fort McMurray Wildfire: When hundreds of individual homes were vaporized by massive wildfires, water connections to each home were broken causing a rippling water loss effect degrading water pressure, thus hydrants in elevated communities ran dry. Visualize hundreds of small holes penetrating the bottom of a water glass, you can’t pour water in fast enough to raise the water level in the glass.

Maui Wildfire 2023: The worst-case scenario happened, the fire hydrants began to lose water supply. The sheer number of homes vaporized broke water connections and water supply tanks could not be recharged due to loss of electricity caused by wildfire.

This being said, our inability to apply lessons learned from past wildfire disasters only means we will continue to experience devastating impacts from future wildfires. The U.P. is not immune.

This letter was an epiphany for me. Emergency management/AARs mirror processes elected officials are chartered with, applying governing lessons learned to improve/protect our democracy.

America has successfully applied improvements though amending the Constitution and strengthening separation of power guard rails.

Our Framers’ created the Constitution at a time where a single ruler could vaporize individual freedoms, so they established a new government for the people by the people. A Nation where you are allowed to be king of your personal domain but constrained from abusing other citizen kingdoms.

The people collectively grant power to representatives to improve/protect the union, and collectively vote to take power away. But failing to apply lessons learned, forgetting our nation’s mission, and losing empathy, we create volatile conditions where greed and hatred can flare up to vaporize, in the blink of an eye, the brave sacrifices Americans have made over two and half centuries.

The state of the union has entered red flag warning status. You and I must extinguish our personal embers of hatred and collectively speak-up to douse the political wildfire of greed and hatred threatening our democracy, a wildfire we failed to adequately prepare for.

All branches of government must be recharged with our country’s mission, sourced by the people’s reservoir based on the common good.

Let’s collectively apply the pressure to return the state of the union to all clear status.